13. The history of Bristol’s trade just before and just after the English loss of Bordeaux shows how precipitous was the decline in both cloth exports and wine imports. Between 1440 and 1460 an average of 4,231 whole cloths were exported annually from Bristol; in the same period an average of 1,738 tons of wine were imported annually. But during the first five years of this period, from 1440 to 1445, the annual averages were 5,427 whole cloths and 2,411 tons of wine. In the last five years, the annual averages were 2,943 whole cloths and 814 tons of wine. In three years in this half-decade, wine shipments were under 800 tons for the year. For detailed figures see E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, eds., England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 95–100. See also Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 41–45, 265–78; James, Medieval Wine Trade, pp. 40–45, 111–12; Renouard, “Conquête de la Guienne,” pp. 18–24; Boutruche, La Crise d’un Société, pp. 170–71, 219–31, 399–411. [BACK]

14. Bristol produced about £1,450 of customs revenue per year in the 1490s. In the same period London produced about £8,520 per year, Southampton about £6,365 per year, and Exeter about £1,000 per year; see Georg von Schanz, Englische Handelspolitike gegen Ende des Mittelalters mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Zeitalters der beiden ersten Tudors, Heinrich VII. und Heinrich VIII., 2 vols. (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1881), vol. 2, pp. 37–46; Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 284. Note, however, that the ratio between customs rates and market prices varied somewhat from item to item, so port totals never reflect the volume of trade in exactly the same way for each port. These totals also vary according to the proportion of denizen, alien, and Hanseatic merchants in each port’s trade, since these groups paid customs on different scales, with foreigners paying higher rates. In the case of Bristol and its near neighbor and rival Exeter, 90 to 95 percent of trade was consistently in the hands of denizens. For London, however, the figure was approximately 50 percent, and for Southampton, 25–30 percent. Finally, those totals apply properly to customs jurisdictions, not just to one port. In the fifteenth century, Bristol did include some adjacent ports in Wales and in the Severn River valley, but with Bridgewater under a separate jurisdiction, Bristol’s totals are for a relatively well-defined area. Indeed, most of the traffic from the minor ports associated with it passed through Bristol both to and from overseas. London was perhaps even better defined, extending only to Gravesend and Tilbury. With Southampton and Exeter, however, the areas covered by the above customs totals are larger and more diffuse. Southampton included Portsmouth, and Exeter included Dartmouth. Hence the figures represent the significance of each port in the system of customs collection better than their actual place in the hierarchy of port cities. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly give us the right order of precedence and suggest in terms of order of magnitude something of the differences among these ports. [BACK]

17. See Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 284; E. M. Carus-Wilson, The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages: The Harte Memorial Lecture in Local History, University of Exeter, 12 May 1961 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1963). [BACK]

18. See G. D. Ramsay, English Overseas Trade during the Centuries of Emergence: Studies in Some Modern Origins of the English Speaking World (London: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 134–38; D. Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, 1460–1540 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947), pp. 161–63, 234. [BACK]

26. L. and P. 13, part 2, p. 322; Stat. Realm 32 Hen. VIII, c. 18, lists Bristol in 1540 among the thirty-six English towns which “nowe are fallen downe decayed and at this day remaine unreedified and doo lye as desolate and vacante groundes”; see also Jean Vanes, ed., Documents Illustrating the Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century (BRS 31, 1979), pp. 28–31. [BACK]

28. G. C. Moore Smith and P. H. Reaney, The Family of Withypoll, with Special Reference to the Manor of Christchurch, Ipswich, and Some Notes on the Allied Families of Thorne, Harper, Lucar and Devereaux (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 34, 1936); George F. Bosworth, George Monoux: The Story of a Waltamstow Worthy—His Foundations and Benefactions (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 3, 1916); George F. Bosworth, George Monoux: The Man and His Work (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 17, 1927); George S. Fry, Abstract of Wills Relating to Walthamstow, co. Essex (1335–1559) (Walthamstow Antiquarian Society Official Publication 9, 1921), pp. 20–46; A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers of London: Preceded by an Introduction on London and Her Gilds up to the Close of the XVth Century, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914–1922), vol. 2, pp. 14–15, 21, 79, 136; Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. 8–10, 19–20, 60–65; Ramsay, English Overseas Trade, pp. 135–36. [BACK]

29. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, pp. xii–xiv, 9–19; Gordon Connell-Smith, “English Merchants Trading to the New World in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 23 (1950): 53–67. [BACK]

30. Johnson, Drapers of London, vol. 2, p. 79; Smith and Reaney, Family of Withypoll, pp. 14–23. Withypoll was a Merchant Adventurer and even governor of the Company. [BACK]

40. Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, pp. 234–35, 260–64; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 60, 92. A similar relation probably also existed with the Canary Islands, with trade proceeding through Cádiz, Puerta Santa Maria, San Lucar de Barremeda, and Seville: J. A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., 120, 1962), pp. 14–15; J. A. Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth: A New History of Sir John Hawkins and the Other Members of His Family Prominent in New England (London: Argonaut Press, 1949), pp. 16–17; Carus-Wilson, ed., Overseas Trade of Bristol, p. 267. [BACK]

41. J. A. Williamson, The Voyages of the Cabots and the English Discovery of North America under Henry VII and Henry VIII (London: A. and C. Black, 1929), pp. 18, 128; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, pp. 14–15; D. B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620, From the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth: The Exploration, Exploitation and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) p. 57. [BACK]

43. There were two Brasil traditions of the Middle Ages. One was the product of Celtic legend, which spoke of a Land of the Blest (Hy-Brasil, in Gaelic). Maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries usually depicted it as a round or semicircular island located near the west coast of Ireland. The second tradition was Italian and Portuguese in origin. It postulated an Isle of Brasil in the mid-Atlantic, southwest of the Iberian peninsula. Usually maps depict it, together with several larger land masses which were identified as the Island of the Seven Cities and Antilla, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic along the tropic of Cancer. It was almost certainly this Brasil that the Bristolians were seeking in the 1480s; see Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500–1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 102–4; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 59–60; Williamson, Voyages of the Cabots, pp. 125–26, 132–33; Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, p. 21; see also Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 41–43. [BACK]

52. Based on analysis of PRO, E 190/1129/11 and 1129/12. For a full discussion of the reasons for using this method and some remarks on trade conditions in 1575–6 and the limitations of the Port Books as a source, see Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 309–14; vol. 2, Appendix 1 (pp. 723–44), and p. 846n.1. [BACK]

53. See Table 6 below. The figure of seven hundred and forty-nine cloths refers only to exports to the Continent. A bit less than twenty-eight cloths plus a small quantity of new draperies were shipped to Ireland in this year. Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, p. 351. [BACK]

62. J. E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England from the Year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the Commencement of the Continental War (1793), 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882–1887), vol. 4, pp. 409, 689; William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Frank Cass, 1939), pp. 36, 75. [BACK]

65. The following account is based on analysis of PRO, E 190/1135/6. This year is the best available in this period, in part because we have a complete set of Port Books on which to base our analysis. For discussion of trade conditions in this year, see Sacks, Trade, Society and Politics, vol. 1, pp. 372–73. [BACK]

67. But definite conclusions as to the scale of the increase cannot be reached, because the rates upon which the Port Books relied were twice revised upward early in James I’s reign: see T. S. Willan, ed., A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), p. xlii. Still, the increase in wine shipments suggests considerable growth in the size of Bristol’s trade, even if the improvement in ad valorem duties is only illusory. [BACK]

73. The Bristol merchant John Browne makes no mention in his Marchants Avizo of ports beyond Gibraltar. On Gibraltar as a barrier to shipping see Braudel, Mediterranean, vol. 1, pp. 117–20, 609–10, 622–23. [BACK]

83. Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of These 1600 Yeeres (Hakluyt Society, extra ser., 12 vols., 1903–1905), vol. 6, pp. 136, 138–39; Willan, Elizabethan Foreign Trade, pp. 92ff. [BACK]